VR Startup Decentraland Raised $25 Million on ICO in 10 Seconds

August 18th, 2017 at 11:58 pm UTC · 3 min read

Decentraland, a distributed platform for a shared virtual reality world in which participants navigate, discover, and interact with others, has today announced its token launch for ERC-20 token MANA, successfully closed in 10 seconds with participants from across the globe contributing the equivalent of $25 million USD in ETH.

Decentraland Project Lead Ari Meilich said: “Decentraland is extremely grateful for the community’s support in making our token launch an incredible and immediate success. We are delighted to now increase our platform’s development and open our virtual world to collaboration from content creators all over the world. Decentraland also extends its thanks to those supporters who didn’t manage to participate and encourages them to take advantage of our other initiatives to earn MANA tokens, be it through our Visions Program or the continuous MANA issuance.”

Due to enormous demand for MANA, Decentraland has announced an additional whitelist of 1,500 engaged supporters who will have the opportunity to purchase a second round of MANA early next week at a discount.

More than 2 billion MANA tokens were issued in the launch. Supporters that missed out on participating in the launch can still earn MANA tokens through Decentraland’s Visions Program and the continuous MANA Issuance Stage, which will allow a decreasing percentage of the initial supply of MANA to be bought from the smart contract each year, with limited supply over time. Decentraland intends to protect the token from inflation by making users burn MANA to claim LAND.

Bitcoin Suisse AG CEO Niklas Nikolajsen said:

Bitcoin Suisse is pleased to have assisted Decentraland with their ICO and provided them with crypto-financial services. A world leading crypto-asset broker and wealth manager, Bitcoin Suisse AG was entrusted with the pre-allocation of the token sale to help ensure a subsequent, fair distribution of MANA tokens, as well as providing necessary AML/KYC services.

Developers can build and monetize applications on the Decentraland platform and use MANA to buy LAND and other in-world goods and services. The value of LAND is based on its proximity to high-traffic hubs, and its ability to host in-demand applications. Decentraland has partnered with district0x, a collective of decentralized marketplaces and communities, to give users the ability to trade land in the secondary market. Although unclaimed LAND can be purchased at the same exchange rate (1,000 MANA = 1 LAND), differences in positions and traffic could potentially see LAND parcels trade at different prices on a secondary market.

Assets raised in the token launch will be distributed as follows: 50% will be reserved for development, 20% for research, 15% for marketing and community development, 10% for operations and business development, and the remaining 5% for legal costs.

Ari Meilich said: “The global gaming community has shown enormous demand for our decentralized virtual reality platform and Decentraland is proud to be offering this to our supporters. We are confident that, following our token launch, Decentraland will enable content creators to push the boundaries of virtual reality and offer gamers unprecedented experiences.”

About Decentraland:

Decentraland is a virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Users can create, discover, experience, and monetize content and applications. Within Decentraland, users can buy and build on parcels of land. Property contents range from static 3D scenes to dynamic applications. A property owner can host other users on their land and determine how the world interacts with them. While gaming, art, and social applications are anticipated within Decentraland, the protocol enables users to come up with many other novel use cases.

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